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Entertainment

Watch ‘Undone’ on Prime, get the inside Silicon Valley scoop and more stuff to do this weekend

Don’t know what to do this weekend? We’ve got you covered.

Watch ‘Undone’ on Prime, get the inside Silicon Valley scoop and more stuff to do this weekend

Our picks for the weekend.

Image: Amazon, Netflix, @wongmjane/Twitter

It’s gonna be May, and what better way to celebrate the best month of the year than by digging into some good content this weekend? “Undone” Season Two takes you through the world inside a young girl’s head; “Erax” is a spooky take on fairy tales; an article explains how we get the inside Silicon Valley scoop, one tweet at a time; and Netflix’s foray into gaming has produced a fun little mobile puzzle game that will keep you entertained with its surprising difficulty.

It's time to come 'Undone'

The first thing you’ll notice when you watch “Undone” is the rotoscope animation. It’s the same technique used for Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly,” and it basically means that the filmmakers captured actual footage and then used that as the source for their animations. In “Undone,” this helps to tell a story of a girl torn between two worlds: the here-and-now and the world in her head, in which her long-dead father convinces her that time travel is real. It’s captivating, to the point that the viewer doesn’t know anymore what’s real and what may actually be the product of mental illness. Season One was a masterpiece, and I can’t wait to watch Season Two, which premieres on Amazon Prime today.

Give slightly scary ‘Erax’ a go

If you’re looking for some more kids-friendly alternate realities, don’t miss “Erax,” a charming if slightly scary short film on Netflix that puts a new twist on the old question: What if fairytales were real? “Erax” was produced as part of Netflix’s Emerging Filmmaker Initiative and was made by up-and-coming Chicago visual artist Hebru Brantley.

Spilling Silicon Valley’s secrets

If you’ve ever read a story about Twitter working on some secret plan, or Instagram getting ready to test a new feature, chances are that those scoops were unearthed by notorious reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong. Based in Hong Kong, Wong has become famous for her ability to find clues on what some of the world’s biggest companies are going to do next. This MIT Technology Review profile tells us what makes her tick and reveals that Facebook’s CTO is among her fans.

Krispee Street is cute, fun and surprisingly hard

Aren’t you curious what Netflix’s foray into gaming is all about? Here’s your chance to find out and have some fun while you’re at it. Krispee Street is a Netflix-exclusive mobile puzzle game based on the Krispee web comic. It’s like “Where’s Waldo?” except you are tasked with finding Murakami-like flower people and big furry monsters with feelings. It’s fun, cute and surprisingly difficult! The game is available to Netflix subscribers via Google and Apple’s app stores.

A version of this story also appeared in today’s Entertainment newsletter; subscribe here.

Janko Roettgers

Janko Roettgers (Twitter, Mastodon) used to be a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.

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Fintech

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Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

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Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

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Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

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